Following my miscarriage I did a lot of loafing and moping. With said loafing and moping I also did a lot of eating and drinking. In the last two months I’ve gained more than 15 pounds and my body fat has shot up, while my strength has deteriorated to the point I can no longer do a pull up, much less the two I could do this past summer. So it’s time to crack down on both my eating and my exercise habits.

First up is my diet. I did Weight Watchers for a while a few years ago, and had a lot of success with it. I know what I should and should not be eating (as well as how much). While I may decide to go the tedious account-for-every-bite route later on, for now I want to focus on simply eating healthy food. A nutritionist friend of mine pointed out that small, incremental change is easier to maintain so I’m starting with dinner. I’m planning a week’s worth of meals at a time, aiming to cook fresh food 4 days a week. By planning dinner ahead, I can avoid a lot of the last minute “I don’t want to cook* so let’s order in / eat out.”

I also joined a cheap gym. I do have a treadmill and pull up bar at home, which I haven’t been using enough, but since I work from home there’s a psychological advantage to going to an actual gym. Mine is on the way to/from my daughter’s day care, so I can easily stop there on the way home from dropping her off. It helps to go to the gym before I check my email and start getting into “work mode.” I find that if I can force myself to go, I work out longer at a gym. But mostly I joined it for access to weights and dumbbells, which are both too expensive and large for me to want to invest in for home. It does, however, mean I need to get up earlier and go to bed at a reasonable hour. No more playing video games until 1am.

I’m not expecting any dramatic Biggest Loser style transformations. I know how to lose weight, and that’s not my goal here. Instead I’m hoping to break out of the habit of eating mostly junk food and then loafing around because I feel too tired / lazy to exercise. I have a feeling I’ll slim down a bit in the process, but this is for the long game.

* Full disclosure: RD does almost all of the cooking around our house, so this is a big change on that front too.